(Sunday Paper, Volume III, Issue 11)

I had a busy, eventful week...but I didn't perform at all.

It was busy in a different way.

Instead of being on stage I had a chance to be in the crowd to watch two of my favorite people do what they enjoy doing.

All in all, it was a pretty good week.

I'll go backwards - on Wednesday I drove down to New York to catch one of my brother's shows at Rockwood Music Hall. He's in residency there every Wednesday in March. I wanted to make it to one of the Wednesday shows and figured it wouldn't be a problem but then when I broke down the month by week it turned out this was the only Wednesday I could do it. So it was a kind of planned/kind of last-minute decision.

Spending time out with my brother was great - that doesn't happen as much as you might think - and the show was worth the trip. Matt went on at 10pm and he was followed at 11 by Amy Vachal, with whom he also jumped back up on stage. After the show we stayed out a little bit and it was an entirely too late night for me but I'm glad I did it.

I know I'm biased, but Matt's really talented. (If it's worth anything to you - I was sitting anonymously in the back of the room and a woman who had never seen him before sat through the set and when he was done turned to her friend and said, "He was really good.") You can find your way to his Spotify through his website here. Also, I enjoy listening to Amy sing - she's got an incredible voice. (This is not a pun, but you might also know her from the TV show The Voice where she advanced kind of far in the competition. Or whatever happens on that show. I don't watch it and I don't know how it works.) But here's a link to her website - support Matt, support her, support live music. (And comedy.)

OK. Believe it or not, that's not all I did this week.

Last Sunday night I went to the Celtics game. But not to see the Celtics. Before the game my oldest daughter's dance performance group danced on the parquet.

It was a proud parent moment.

I love this picture so much I think it merits one of the rare public postings of a picture of my child.

I'm proud of her performance. I'm proud of her. But Sunday night I was just as proud of the parking spot I found in Boston within a stone's throw of the Garden and the picture I took over there of her on the Jumbotron. Pretty good, right?

But I'm not just proud because my daughter did great. It just so happens I think she's a great dancer (but I have no idea - it could be that she isn't any good and my non-informed judgment is terribly off base), but what's more important to me is the fact that she has found this activity that she enjoys so much. (For the record, all three enjoy dancing, but the oldest is the only one currently participating in this performance group.) For a while early on we weren't sure what would capture her fancy.

But I think that's a huge credit to Dancer's Workshop in Sudbury, Massachusetts. I can not endorse that place enough. If you're looking for a dance place and you're in the area - that's the place I'd recommend.

As for the Celtics game - we left after the third quarter. It was a close game, but I didn't mind. It was a school night. I wasn't there for the game.

I had seen everything I wanted to see.

Writing

*It's school vacation week (two weeks actually) for the school I work for Wednesday through Friday, so I have two weeks where I'm just doing stuff from home without the end-of-week obligations. (Hence the ability to go to a Wednesday show in New York City.) So I've been keeping busy. Also, this is my first experience with the two weeks off in March versus the one week off in February and April school vacations. It's a pretty good new way to break up that span of time up until the baseball season starts.

Comedy

*As I mentioned, nothing doing comedy-wise this week. Which was fine - turned out I got a little bit sick at the end of the week...and of course the storm Tuesday was inconvenient. (And even though it didn't happen until late Monday it kept me from going out that night.) BUT I've been filling the calendar for April - lots of shows lined up. Click the Comedy Shows link at the top of the page for details. Another slow week - Kathy is away - but things will pick up end of this week into next week.

What I've Been Enjoying

*It's NCAA Tournament time, so there's no chance I'm enjoying anything besides that. Did a couple of new pools this year which maybe I'll tell you about some time, but suffice it to say the first-ever 16 seed over a 1 seed did not lead to success in one of those endeavors. Here's the thing I enjoy most about the NCAA Tournament these days - the ability to watch all four games in a particular window from the comfort of my own home. Growing up I would rely on CBS changing the feed to whatever game was coming down to the wire. While I never missed anything huge I always sensed a comeback from the scores on the crawl and would plead with whichever Gumbel (Bryant? Greg? I forget) was in the studio to change to the more exciting game. It's been probably a decade (I have no idea about time spans like this) that the games have been offered on TBS, TNT, and TruTV in addition to CBS and I stopped and appreciated that this week because I've really taken it for granted that I can do this thing which for 20 years or so was all I ever wanted.

Notes

*For the past few weeks here in the Notes section I've been telling you about a situation that occurred down in North Carolina - that I hardly ever think about - where, in Greensboro, our server at a restaurant recognized Kevin from the University of South Carolina - three hours away! He went out of his way to tell her he was there to watch me perform in the comedy festival. And SHE DID NOT CARE! And I bring this up this week just because I wonder if maybe, since she recognized Kevin as a professor, if maybe he should have introduced me as a former teacher and that would have at least impressed her a little bit.

*Listen, I'm sure you don't need me, an amateur snow melting observer, to tell you that it is highly unusual for all the snow from storms that began in December to completely melt before we're hit again by multiple storms in March that put down so much snow again that we might have coverage now until late April or May. But I will tell you: it is a highly unusual situation that we are facing this year.

*Hey! There's still two Wednesdays left in March, which means you have two more opportunities to catch Matt's residency. That's 10pm on the 21st and the 28th. Rockwood Music Hall. Go. You won't regret it.

*It's been a while since I plugged my own social media. If you aren't already following along on the Facebook page, please give that a Like. And I'll take your follow on Twitter - @jsucich. I think I've been putting out some pretty good content on the ol' Twitter recently. Thanks!